To think many mumsnetters have little or no understanding of life on a low income

[crocodilesarevicious]

It's going to be hard to know how to phrase this as I don't want to cause offence.

I've been hanging around for a while. One thing I've noticed is that benefit threads become angry very quickly because so many are quite loud and fixed in their view that the UK is full of starving children reliant on value baked beans from food banks to fill their hungry tummies.

However, if someone who is on benefits or a low income is searching specific advice! they are often given quite short shrift. I've noticed this a few times - they are told, often brusquely, to retrain as something at university - usually a teacher or a nurse. These are graduate professions yet they are chucked out as something anyone can do. Not everyone can go to college or university due to financial restraints but also, some people don't have the academic ability. This is dismissed and shrugged off - if people aren't on much money then they need to find a way to make more money, even if this isn't possible.

Childminding, or starting a business is also suggested. People who rent may not be able to do this. Again, this takes a certain amount of financial and business savvy not to mention starting up costs.

Cooking is another area people seem to have little understanding of. It's so easy to cook healthy, cheap nutritious meals if your kitchen is large and a pleasure to cook in and you can whiz in the car to sainsburys or Tesco. If you have a small, grubby, dark kitchen and the local Spar or premier shop it's a bit different.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that when talking about people in general terms, Mumsnet likes to be left wing and PC. Yet when it's someone specific, irrelevant and often patronising advice is given to them and then they are flamed when they can't act on it.

My own position, while I'm a graduate and employed in a professional capacity, is perhaps between the two. I've never been reliant in benefits but was homeless for a time in my 20s and am able to see how things that look simple often aren't.

I find this thread very patronising.

I have hand-washed in the bath when between washing machines. This was in the summer, in a well ventilated house, with a lot more health than I have now. It was back breaking. Would I do it again if I had to - yes. Would I do it as a choice - under no circumstances! I don't know how I would have managed in winter!

I don't know.

Those who are comfortable now financially could still have struggled in the past. So it doesn't automatically mean they know nothing of poverty. Whereas some people will just find excuse after excuse about why they can't even ATTEMPT to work.

As for retraining, I do agree with you. Not everyone can do it. I was bullied at uni and so had to drop out. Maybe one day I'll feel able to cope again, sigh. But what do you suggest people advise other posters? "You sound too stupid to get a degree and good job- so just accept your lot it life!"- you'd be flamed if you wrote that and it would be pointlessly negative.

I think that most people on MN try to offer good advice but it naturally comes from their won perspective. It doesn't necessarily mean that the advice is worthless: sometimes the ideas which come from left field are the ones to help you out of a rut I htink, hence it's good to ask strangers for advice, not just your immediate family and friends who have a similar outlook.

I partially agree, as some mnetters like me can definitely understand.
But on the other hand, you have the judgey type, unfortunately in the majority on here who I presume think they are immune to such hardship, because they have savings or support to back them up. But not everyone has the means to save for such disasters & however much you prepare, anything can fall flat at some point.

When I was living alone with economy 5 storage heaters I found drying clothes a real problem, more so than washing actually. When you have a washing machine you can at least spin the clothes so the residual water was off of them and they would dry much quicker than if you tried to hand wash them. If you can't get your clothes dry quick enough then they smell like you haven't washed them at all. In fact worse sometimes!

Now I am living with my DP I am lucky enough to have a washing machine, tumble dryer, central heating that I can switch on at whim and hot water for a bath. I still marvel at having all of those things whereas he things I'm just weird. He had a very different upbringing to me and always had a decent job and decent housing as an adult.

I can clearly remember trying to have a tepid bath in my old house, no way to hear the water properly as it would hear up overnight and by the following evening when I wanted to use it, was no longer hot. I would try and get clean, jump out into a cold house and leg it upstairs where I would get into a freezing cold bed. There I would shiver, with layers and layers of clothing and keep waking up as I was so fucking cold. Then one day I bought an electric blanket for my bed. OMG is was the best thing I've ever experienced to get into a warm bed and be able to stretch out in a starfish shape instead of being scrunched up in a ball. I loved that electric blanket with all my heart, and it didn't cost much to use as I had it on a timer.

I hand washed when in refuge as I couldn't afford tokens for the on site washer. It was hell. Small baby, vomit and poo all over clothes. Tiny room in damp refuge with a storage heater that would have caused a fire if covered in clothes. Things went mouldy they took that long to dry. There is no worse feeling than putting your prescious tiny baby in a clean dry vest that smells musty and is covered in mould spots.

Many people don't really have a clue - and over the course of this thread I've come to realise that that includes me. ... Lots of food for thought here.

Thank you, Hadley

There's ignorance. There's prejudice. And, also, magical thinking. Plenty of people have seen the abyss, as a PP put it, been terrified by it, and have invested a great deal in magic charms to save them from the fate of those whimpering below. They value work; they are prudent; they cherish ambition; they are aspirational. They're rightly proud of these qualities. What they cannot bear to acknowledge is that they are also lucky. They believe the world is fair. They invoke 'karma'. They trust in their charms to keep them out of the abyss.

If they believe that these charms work - and they must, because the belief saves them from fear of the abyss - they have to deduce that those who have fallen didn't possess the magic qualities. They might generously try to bestow a little prudence & aspiration on those below but, when the cry floats up: "I can't use this!", it utterly shakes their belief system and threatens to uncover the fear. So they get angry; turn away, grumbling about people not helping themselves.

It's very like rape apology, actually. Incapacity to accept that our world isn't fair, and bad things happen to good people.

I'm just wondering - when people hand wash do they roll and wring stuff in a towel before drying?
I'm asking cos an ex-flatmate had never heard of it...it was something I learned as child- but now less people handwash routinely maybe people don't know...

Unlucky, this is exactly what people have to contend with.

No, you're doing it wrong. It will work if you do it like this. No! Try it like THIS! Then you won't be poor!

They will.

Yeah, unlucky, but you have to dry the towels as well.

Been doing an experiment in my new flat - I've got central heating but no garden. My machine-washed, spun at 1400rpm, sheets have been in the boiler cupboard for a week and are still damp.

Multiply that by more than one bed and children's clothes to wash. It's not a big cupboard.

YY, Croc

Think of the hot water that would use!

Have any of you tried borrowing a friend's washerwoman?

Actually, I tried washing jeans in the bath via the grape trampling method once, when the washing machine died and I was desperate. Effing nightmare.

Arsenic

YY croc ....constructive advice, no criticism - but what you have to put up with??? ....I think that says more about you than me...

I read a lot of this thread yesterday but didn't have time to give a response.

I have to say, I totally agree with the OP. It was a relief to read it and to see a number of people agreeing too.

Of course people's views and advice is influenced by their own life experiences, that is natural. Some have much more ability to empathise with the plight of others though.

Whilst I haven't really experienced true grinding poverty, I have had my back up against the wall financially more times than I care to remember because, shock horror, the cost of childcare forced me out of the job market for many years and I was a SAHM more through circumstance than choice. I know that there are some posters on here who criticise people like me saying that if we couldn't easily afford childcare then we shouldn't have had children. Apparently everyone should work out every expense, big or small, that might come about, and not have children if they cannot comfortably cover them all!!! I always feel that those comments must come from people who have never truly had to worry about money, or whether they can cover the next round of bills, but they do come across as very smug, judgmental and patronising. They imply that only people who have plenty of money should have children, and to do it any other way is deemed irresponsible. The world just doesn't work that way for many of us.

Joint finances is another bugbear. Whenever the subject comes up, people pile in and imply that any couple who do not want to pool their income and consider it all joint cannot possibly be a normal, supportive partnership. One partner simply must be financially abusing the other. Of course, there are a number of cases where that is true, but there are also couples who simply like to keep things separate. My parents always pooled everything. My husband's parents never did. Both were long married, loving and lifelong partners. Hubby and I are somewhere in-between. Some is joint, some is not.

Accept what people tell you about their circumstances rather than dismissing it by throwing your toys out of the pram when they cannot follow your advice. Think before posting, and at least try to look at things from their perspective.

I've been very poor, I've been ok, I've been very wealthy and now, post divorce, I'm back to ok again.

Thank God I was very poor as a child and as a single person, I've never had the stress my parents had of living hand to mouth with children. What I did learn, as a child in that situation, was to do without things that were not essential - it's been hard to teach my own dc that lesson because they grew up in an affluent household.

What they have had, with the two very different sides of the family, is an awareness of their privilege - that's the best I could do. - that and teach them that they needed to be able to work for their living and not rely on anyone else to support them. They've always known me work, even when what I earned didn't totally cover the childcare, it paid off in the end as an investment in my own future as well as theirs. I have no romantic memories of poverty, I remember damp and boring food - being ok is the best state to be in IMO, enough to pay the bills with a bit for enjoyment. I don't envy the super wealthy - I've seen their lives and it's not for me.

Yes, I didn't mean running a house has no value. I meant that because it is generally done by women people think it is easy and requires no skill or effort.

Also, the proud working class woman competing to get her sheets on the line first on wash day and making good use of her magic chicken would not have been at the bottom of the heap financially.

You've completely lost me unlucky, sorry.

Put up with what?

Unlucky, this is exactly what people have to contend with.
No, you're doing it wrong. It will work if you do it like this. No! Try it like THIS! Then you won't be poor!
They will.